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Friday, 20 June 2014

Pops of Red, Code Breakers and Storm Field

"Pops of Red" :- A week or so ago I decided to drive a relatively short distance from where I live, park the car and walk around the Castle Hill National Nature Reserve that's pretty much under everyone's nose and largely ignored. It's hard to believe that such an open and beautiful block of land is literally sitting behind the village of Woodingdean on the edge of Brighton. It's not very well advertised or known as I've lived in the area for many many years (too many to mention) and have only recently discovered it myself. Maybe it's a good thing that it's not known as that helps protect its beauty and tranquility. I walked all the way around, sticking to the perimeter route and path which took (approx) an hour and a half and only bumped into four people (two walking dogs and two on bicycles). This image was shot as I was on my way back to the car which was parked in a dirt car park on the Falmer Road.

"Code Breakers" :- Once a highly top secret establishment, hidden from prying eyes and never mentioned or talked about Bletchley Park in Milton Keynes (in Buckinghamshire, England) was far from the frontline of WWII but vital to the war effort. It was a huge gathering of minds and machines as its sole purpose was to break the messages, codes and ciphers being sent by enemy forces and translate them so that the information could then be passed on thus saving lives. It workwed so well the war was shortened by as much as two years. This shot was taken deep inside Hut 6 which was used for the decrytion of Enigma messages. Sitting on the old wooden table are two original Typex Machines that were printing rotor machines based on the Enigma patents. Once the set up for Enigma (the letters and combinations were changed on a daily basis for each and every Enigma machine) had been workld out these machines would be set up to then decipher and print out the messages. Once the print out was complete it would be taken away for a group of translators to then turn into English. Just to drum in how difficult a task they faced every day each enigma machine offered 150,000,000,000,000,000,000 (or 150 QUINTILLION) possible solutions to any one enciphered message.

"Storm Field" :- This could be anywhere. A rough patch of land, an aerial mast, some distant pylons & power cables and a stormy sky. In fact I can't even tell you where I was when I took the shot because I have no idea. I can however tell you which country I was in and roughly where I was. The country was Romania and I was (somewhere) on the outskirts of Bucharest. I'd driven to Romania to help rescue many dogs that had been taken off the streets in order to help save their lives. The dogs needed picking up and then driving from Romania all the way through Europe where they would finally be delivered somewhere in the Netherlands. The dogs were being held in pens in an undisclosed field (for safety) that we were taken to. The directions I was being given as I was driving were in broken English and the traffic in Bucharest tests you to your limit not to mention trying to avoid the trams that don't appear to stop for anything. Eventually we got to the field after many "right turn here" and "Go left go left now". I knew we were still on the outskirts of Bucharest but I couldn't tell you in which direction we'd gone or where we were. It was all a blur. The weather closed in as we were standing in the cold field which was when I took this shot. All I wanted to do at this point was get to the hotel, have a hot shower, grab some food and a beer and go to sleep. At this point I'd been on the go for 35 hours. Adventures are not like they are in the movies.